Cloverfield ««½
PG-13, 84m. 2008
Cast and Credits: Lizzy Caplan (Marlena Diamond), Jessica Lucas (Lily Ford), T.J. Miller (Hud Platt), Michael Stahl-David (Rob Hawkins), Mike Vogel (Jason Hawkins), Odette Yustman (Beth McIntyre). Directed by Matt Reeves. Screenplay by Drew Goddard.
Cloverfield is nothing more than a big tease; an 84-minute cracker jack box filled with stale caramel corn whose only big surprise is to get moviegoers yearning to see what it was that sent the Statue of Liberty’s head bouncing down the streets of Manhattan towards terrified New Yorkers on the eve of someone’s going away party.
This is all thanks to the much talked about trailer audiences saw back in November which featured that very shot along with several annoyingly, jerky camera movements at a going away party that brings back reminders of how The Blair Witch Project (1999) was shot.
I refused to believe the complaints certain movie-goers had who said they suffered from motion sickness as a result of those dizzying camera shots that often occurred in Blair Witch.
Nor did I heed the warning posted outside the box office for Cloverfield that spoke of the possibility one might experience such ailments watching it due to the way the film was shot; the kind of feeling one gets on a roller coaster the statement read.
It didn’t take long for those symptoms to kick in watching 2008’s first major box office blockbuster that not surprisingly, took in $46 million opening weekend thanks in part to the film’s clever marketing campaign. The film is shot the same way The Blair Witch Project was done with a hand held camera but it could have been done using a cell phone. The three victims though in Blair Witch went off with the intention of making their little adventure in search of a supposed urban legend as a documentary.
By comparison, when one of the party guests in Cloverfield is asked to shoot the night’s events and film every one’s goodbyes for a friend who is going off to take a job in Japan, I was not so much surprised by the jerky camera movements and numerous shots of guests mouths talking instead of focusing on their faces as I was annoyed. I will be honest. If someone asked me to hold a camera documenting the night’s events asking complete strangers, half of whom I probably would not know to say their goodbyes to a friend of mine going off to take a high paying job in another country, I probably would not care who or how I was shooting or where I had the camera pointed at. I would much rather drink and mingle with the guests.
I do, however, now see movie-goers points on how some literally got sick to their stomach watching The Blair Witch Project. By comparison, I almost got a headache watching Cloverfield and that was not the only problem. At least the filmmakers behind Blair Witch had a memorable premise making audiences think the mysterious disappearance of some college kids who were never found but left behind a video was actually a true story.
“That was like Blair Witch mixed in with Godzilla,” I overheard someone say as everyone was coming out. He wasn’t far from the truth. Cloverfield’s creature could well have been a four legged experiment gone horribly wrong when the scientists of Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park movies attempted to clone dinosaurs.
Anyone who says this film was inspired by The Blair Witch Project should look further into motion picture history, in particular, made-for-TV movies. The notion of shooting documentary style like as though we are actually seeing it live was done back in 1983 with a little made-for-tv film called Special Bulletin about a TV reporter and cameraman being taken hostage by nuclear terrorists in South Carolina. Much of the film was shot inside a news station’s studio as though we were actually watching a live crisis. According to trivia on IMDB.com, some residents of South Carolina thought the events were really going on despite the network’s repeated message that this was a dramatization.
Perhaps Cloverfield would have worked better if the events had been an actual news story, the way everyone believed Martians had landed back in the 1940s with Orson Welles’ radio adaptation of War of the Worlds as opposed to being all about a video found among the dead in the remains of Central Park.
Cloverfield is nothing more than a mass marketed 9/11 clone filled with collapsing New York skyscrapers, clouds of asbestos and flying business papers and terrified partygoers running for cover. Instead of terrorists flying hijacked planes into buildings in the early morning hours of rush hour traffic, however, it is a four legged monster running amok throughout Manhattan after midnight.
©1/20/08
PG-13, 84m. 2008
Cast and Credits: Lizzy Caplan (Marlena Diamond), Jessica Lucas (Lily Ford), T.J. Miller (Hud Platt), Michael Stahl-David (Rob Hawkins), Mike Vogel (Jason Hawkins), Odette Yustman (Beth McIntyre). Directed by Matt Reeves. Screenplay by Drew Goddard.
This is all thanks to the much talked about trailer audiences saw back in November which featured that very shot along with several annoyingly, jerky camera movements at a going away party that brings back reminders of how The Blair Witch Project (1999) was shot.
I refused to believe the complaints certain movie-goers had who said they suffered from motion sickness as a result of those dizzying camera shots that often occurred in Blair Witch.
Nor did I heed the warning posted outside the box office for Cloverfield that spoke of the possibility one might experience such ailments watching it due to the way the film was shot; the kind of feeling one gets on a roller coaster the statement read.
It didn’t take long for those symptoms to kick in watching 2008’s first major box office blockbuster that not surprisingly, took in $46 million opening weekend thanks in part to the film’s clever marketing campaign. The film is shot the same way The Blair Witch Project was done with a hand held camera but it could have been done using a cell phone. The three victims though in Blair Witch went off with the intention of making their little adventure in search of a supposed urban legend as a documentary.
By comparison, when one of the party guests in Cloverfield is asked to shoot the night’s events and film every one’s goodbyes for a friend who is going off to take a job in Japan, I was not so much surprised by the jerky camera movements and numerous shots of guests mouths talking instead of focusing on their faces as I was annoyed. I will be honest. If someone asked me to hold a camera documenting the night’s events asking complete strangers, half of whom I probably would not know to say their goodbyes to a friend of mine going off to take a high paying job in another country, I probably would not care who or how I was shooting or where I had the camera pointed at. I would much rather drink and mingle with the guests.
I do, however, now see movie-goers points on how some literally got sick to their stomach watching The Blair Witch Project. By comparison, I almost got a headache watching Cloverfield and that was not the only problem. At least the filmmakers behind Blair Witch had a memorable premise making audiences think the mysterious disappearance of some college kids who were never found but left behind a video was actually a true story.
“That was like Blair Witch mixed in with Godzilla,” I overheard someone say as everyone was coming out. He wasn’t far from the truth. Cloverfield’s creature could well have been a four legged experiment gone horribly wrong when the scientists of Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park movies attempted to clone dinosaurs.
Anyone who says this film was inspired by The Blair Witch Project should look further into motion picture history, in particular, made-for-TV movies. The notion of shooting documentary style like as though we are actually seeing it live was done back in 1983 with a little made-for-tv film called Special Bulletin about a TV reporter and cameraman being taken hostage by nuclear terrorists in South Carolina. Much of the film was shot inside a news station’s studio as though we were actually watching a live crisis. According to trivia on IMDB.com, some residents of South Carolina thought the events were really going on despite the network’s repeated message that this was a dramatization.
Perhaps Cloverfield would have worked better if the events had been an actual news story, the way everyone believed Martians had landed back in the 1940s with Orson Welles’ radio adaptation of War of the Worlds as opposed to being all about a video found among the dead in the remains of Central Park.
Cloverfield is nothing more than a mass marketed 9/11 clone filled with collapsing New York skyscrapers, clouds of asbestos and flying business papers and terrified partygoers running for cover. Instead of terrorists flying hijacked planes into buildings in the early morning hours of rush hour traffic, however, it is a four legged monster running amok throughout Manhattan after midnight.
©1/20/08
No comments:
Post a Comment